A teenager who killed her mother was cleared of murder after a jury agreed that she had lost control after being driven to the edge.

Rebecca Durkin, 19, from Southport admitted the unlawful killing of hospital cleaner Clancy Durkin at the house they shared on Guildford Road, Birkdale.

But she denied murdering her mum, who was strangled, claiming that she acted in the heat of the moment after being provoked.

A jury took just two and a half hours to find the Southport College student not guilty of murder.

Durkin is to be sentenced next month and was warned by Judge Clement Goldstone, QC, that she faces a “substantial sentence in custody.”

Her barrister, Simon Medland, QC, said that Durkin was “practically desperate to know her fate” but the judge said he was adjourning for a pre-sentence report to be prepared.

Durkin looked visibly relieved at the unanimous verdict and smiled at supporters in the public gallery. One of the seven women jurors wiped away tears after returning the verdict.

During the trial, Durkin told how Clancy was an alcoholic who suffered from depression and brought her up alone, saying that her mum “tried her best” but the “drink took over and she was violent”.

She described how her life was characterised by her mum breaking up with various partners, arguments, alcohol, being “on edge all the time” and wondering if neighbours would call the police.

Durkin said she argued with her mum on January 6 in front of a friend of hers, who then invited her to stay at her house for the night. But she returned later to pick up some clothes, which was when the killing happened.

She said her mum said “nasty, evil things” including that her dead grandparents hated her and she responded by calling her the “runt of the litter”.

She said: “She just went mad. She said ‘you ungrateful cow’. She shoved me over. I shoved her back. I’m sure she wanted to kill me. It was a muddled fight.

“I was down again because she had a pillow over my face. I shoved her off me. She’s done it loads of times. She tried it when I was 10 years old, to suffocate me. I knocked her out the way and bit her.

“I was trying to kick but I couldn’t. I tried to use all my strength then she got me back. I thought she’s not giving up here.

“It was horrible. I got her and grabbed her neck. She was still carrying on trying to attack me. I just got hold of her neck and didn’t let go.

“I knew if she had killed me that night she’d have killed herself. She wanted us both dead because she hated her own life and she knew I hated mine.

“She stopped attacking me. I wasn’t even looking. She was dead.

I remember thinking how did I kill her?

“I ran out the room. Then I went back to check her. She wasn’t moving. I felt sick.”

In his closing speech, Brian Cummings, QC, prosecuting, asked jurors whether text messages sent by Durkin to her friend, moments after the killing, displayed the actions of someone who had lost all control.

One of the messages read: “Forgot some make-up. Haha.”

Durkin also confessed to a friend: “I’ve killed my mum. I swear down I’ve done it.”

Mr Cummins asked jurors: “Are these the actions of someone who had completely lost control of themselves?”

He added: “If the prosecution have failed to make you sure that the defendant had not lost control at the time when she killed her mother, your verdict must be ‘not guilty’.

“But if, in your honest opinion, the prosecution have made you sure that the defendant killed her mother with the necessary intent for murder, and made you sure that the defendant had not lost control, then you will have arrived at the unhappy conclusion that the defendant committed murder.”